ISBN: 9780520255623

Description: 325 pages ; 23 cm

Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.

Contents:

• pt. 1. The rise of the lethal chamber
• Envisioning the lethal chamber
• Fashioning a frightful weapon of war
• Devising "constructive peacetime uses"
• Staging the world's first gas execution
• "Like watering flowers"
• Pillar of respectability
• The rising storm
• Adapted for genocide
• pt. 2. The fall of the gas chamber
• Clouds of abolition
• The battle over capital punishment
• "Cruel and unusual punishment"?
• The last gasp
• Appendix 1: U.S. patent for the lethal gas chamber (1937/1939)
• Appendix 2: Persons executed by lethal gas in the United States, by state, 1924/1999.

LCCN: 2009052476

Control Number: 726477

Subjects:

• Capital punishment -- United States -- History -- 20th century.
• Gas chambers -- United States -- History.